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I succumbed to a new nonfiction book (mmmm, tasty) even though I haven't read the last three all the way through yet. This means I now own not one but TWO books on the smells of the 1700s (the other would be The Foul and the Fragrant).
So far I am very much enjoying "Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England." It is very obviously a Ph.D. thesis-turned-book, but I seem to often like those sorts of things. (I loved "Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books," for instance.) It has a lot of plates of Hogarth scenes and some by a Marcellus Laroon (love the name!). The Laroon pictures show various ill-dressed people selling things from baskets carried on their heads. Right now I'm in the section on food, titled "Mouldy." I've completed the section on clothing (Itchy) and skin/teeth problems (Ugly).
Nothing in the book so far is as revolting as the opening bit in The Foul and the Fragrant about them emptying out the cesspool beneath a house near the university, and people dying from the gases released as workers dredged out discarded bits of human remains left over from illicit anatomy sessions (J. has forbidden me from ever reading that passage out loud again). There are some excellent bits about cooking advice from the 1600s on how to spot rotten meat at market. Look out for unscrupulous butchers who painted old meat over with fresh blood! And anyone selling you meat after dark is clearly looking to cheat you.
For me the greatest pleasure I get from reading this kind of history is the ability it gives me to appreciate my life, and the incredible amount of wealth that it is easy to take for granted if you're an employed United States citizen: I have many outfits, and I get to wash them more than once a year. Most people around me bathe their entire bodies on a regular basis. I can choose to buy meat, fish, poultry, eggs, or dairy at any time, and these items will have been brought to my neighborhood in refrigerated trucks and stored in coolers that are not accessible to flies, or warm, or anything else gross. Imagine, just for a minute, living in London and trying to eat eggs that had been shipped (over 1600s roads, no less) from Scotland in unrefrigerated conditions, in the summer. Blecccchhh! My vegetables are not (generally speaking) shipped to me in unwashed containers that were previously used to transmit human waste! I own more than one pair of shoes, and most of my shoes have heels, soles, and toes.
Sometimes, it is easy to take the unspeakable bliss that is modern life compared to life in the 1600s for granted. Reading social history really helps to get over that. Though once you've finished reading about life in the 1600s in an urban area, it's hard to understand why anyone would ever want to go back to those times. Poop being flung on you from above, no fresh water, bread deliberately baked full of stones... ick, ick, ick. Sure, you might have fabulous gems sewn to your clothing - but your skin was itchy with parasites, your clothes were spotted and stained with weird stuff, your food was potentially adulterated and nasty, your teeth would rot out of your head by your forties unless you were very lucky, and practically the only anesthetic you had to deal with all this was booze, and even your beer and wine were probably much nastier than modern beer and wine.
Being a monk in one of those orders that lived out in the countryside, grew their own food, and bathed a lot might not have been so bad, but I can see why Kings and Queens traveled a lot on progress - probably to get away from the smells and get some better food and drink.
Now I'm going to have a fudgsicle, some organic milk, some fancy coffee, and swim in my apartment building's perfectly clean rooftop pool, while appreciating that the city air is not full of coal dust. Modern life, thy name is bliss. Ahhhhhhh.
So far I am very much enjoying "Hubbub: Filth, Noise, and Stench in England." It is very obviously a Ph.D. thesis-turned-book, but I seem to often like those sorts of things. (I loved "Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books," for instance.) It has a lot of plates of Hogarth scenes and some by a Marcellus Laroon (love the name!). The Laroon pictures show various ill-dressed people selling things from baskets carried on their heads. Right now I'm in the section on food, titled "Mouldy." I've completed the section on clothing (Itchy) and skin/teeth problems (Ugly).
Nothing in the book so far is as revolting as the opening bit in The Foul and the Fragrant about them emptying out the cesspool beneath a house near the university, and people dying from the gases released as workers dredged out discarded bits of human remains left over from illicit anatomy sessions (J. has forbidden me from ever reading that passage out loud again). There are some excellent bits about cooking advice from the 1600s on how to spot rotten meat at market. Look out for unscrupulous butchers who painted old meat over with fresh blood! And anyone selling you meat after dark is clearly looking to cheat you.
For me the greatest pleasure I get from reading this kind of history is the ability it gives me to appreciate my life, and the incredible amount of wealth that it is easy to take for granted if you're an employed United States citizen: I have many outfits, and I get to wash them more than once a year. Most people around me bathe their entire bodies on a regular basis. I can choose to buy meat, fish, poultry, eggs, or dairy at any time, and these items will have been brought to my neighborhood in refrigerated trucks and stored in coolers that are not accessible to flies, or warm, or anything else gross. Imagine, just for a minute, living in London and trying to eat eggs that had been shipped (over 1600s roads, no less) from Scotland in unrefrigerated conditions, in the summer. Blecccchhh! My vegetables are not (generally speaking) shipped to me in unwashed containers that were previously used to transmit human waste! I own more than one pair of shoes, and most of my shoes have heels, soles, and toes.
Sometimes, it is easy to take the unspeakable bliss that is modern life compared to life in the 1600s for granted. Reading social history really helps to get over that. Though once you've finished reading about life in the 1600s in an urban area, it's hard to understand why anyone would ever want to go back to those times. Poop being flung on you from above, no fresh water, bread deliberately baked full of stones... ick, ick, ick. Sure, you might have fabulous gems sewn to your clothing - but your skin was itchy with parasites, your clothes were spotted and stained with weird stuff, your food was potentially adulterated and nasty, your teeth would rot out of your head by your forties unless you were very lucky, and practically the only anesthetic you had to deal with all this was booze, and even your beer and wine were probably much nastier than modern beer and wine.
Being a monk in one of those orders that lived out in the countryside, grew their own food, and bathed a lot might not have been so bad, but I can see why Kings and Queens traveled a lot on progress - probably to get away from the smells and get some better food and drink.
Now I'm going to have a fudgsicle, some organic milk, some fancy coffee, and swim in my apartment building's perfectly clean rooftop pool, while appreciating that the city air is not full of coal dust. Modern life, thy name is bliss. Ahhhhhhh.
